Why ‘Star Wars’ Is MORE than a Film Franchise

What Do You Think?

By Culture SlatePublished 2 years ago • 3 min read

To many in popular culture, Star Wars is known for its films first and foremost. After all, it was a film that changed the face of twentieth-century cinema. So in many ways, one can consider Star Wars a film franchise. However, if one has been into Star Wars for a long time, one must wonder how much of that is actually true.

Star Wars has expanded beyond films throughout the years, making dozens of books, video games, comics, and other aspects of media. In fact, one could argue there are more stories set in different types of media beyond film, and it is getting harder to say that Star Wars is just a film franchise. So, is it a film franchise?

A Larger View of Star Wars

Star Wars was once a trilogy of films, then a six-film saga, now a nine-film saga. However, it has expanded to TV shows, books, comics, etc. In fact, the second Star Wars story ever told was not even The Empire Strikes Back. Instead, it was a book by author Alan Dean Foster called Splinter of the Mind's Eye. This book is technically the first sequel to A New Hope and originally was going to be the film George would have made if A New Hope didn't make money.

However, this little outing into publishing wouldn't be the last time Star Wars did this. When the original trilogy was released, they published the Han Solo Adventures; these books detailed the young scoundrel's origins and told of his wild adventures. Later after The Empire Strikes Back, the Lando Calrissian books came out. And we hear about the Calrissian Chronicles in Solo: A Star Wars Story.

First Step Into A Large Franchise

Of course, Star Wars made its significant strides in publishing in 1991 when Heir to the Empire was released, a tale told after Return of the Jedi and the first major book in the Expanded Universe, which would dominate Star Wars for the next decade in the '90s. In many ways, this was an era when Star Wars was indeed a book franchise as it was the only thing expanding and moving the universe forward. So many stories were now being told in books and, of course, comics continuing the legacy of the galaxy far, far away.

The next major step outside of films was The Clone Wars (2008) TV series, George's and Star Wars' first significant leap into full-on television. For four to five years, Star Wars was primarily television, and to a whole generation of kids, The Clone Wars was the primary source of Star Wars for many of that generation. Finally, in 2019 Star Wars entered the realm of streaming, with The Mandalorian becoming a cultural phenomenon.

Of course, the counterpoint to all this would be that the films still drove the franchise, despite it all. They did create the prequel era, from which The Clone Wars series spun off, and The Mandalorian is a sequel to the original trilogy and a prequel to the sequel trilogy.

A Galaxy Far Far Away

Films are the driving force, that is a given, but the Star Wars galaxy is far more than a film franchise. There are several great books, comics, TV shows, and more, all of them with intriguing characters from Thrawn, Ashoka, Mara Jade, and the rest. Perhaps saying Star Wars is JUST a film franchise is not the right thing. With so many beautiful stories that mean so much to fans, categorizing it as just one thing is unfair. It is not just one thing; it's a galaxy far, far away.

Written by Joel Davis

Syndicated from Culture Slate

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